The announcement of the acquisition by Erewash Museum of the Margaret and Edwin Hassé Memorial Plaques (Death Pennies) has received widespread coverage in local media outlets.

It was made in a Press Release issued by Erewash Borough Council in January and quickly appeared in the Nottingham Post, Ilkeston Advertiser, Long Eaton Chronicle and Long Eaton Website Extra. An interview with Unexamined Lives’ genealogist Keith Oseman was also played on Ian Skye’s Breakfast Programme on Radio Derby.

Recently, ‘Unexamined Lives’ researched the family history of the Borrowash Dyches, working from William Dyche’s handwritten memoir. His vibrant account (overlapping the 19th and 20th centuries) is enhanced by some intricate watercolour paintings of the village and his childhood home, but the ‘Dyche file,’ held by the Derbyshire Records Office, also contains over 100 black and white photographs of other people.

These lines from Rupert Brooke’s most famous poem present a very different perception of the First World War from the one that is commonly held today. To 21st century eyes it is impossible to blink at the industrial scale of the carnage of World War One; the incompetence of the generals and the appalling conditions in which those at the Front were forced to suffer. All this is very far removed from the sentimental- even glutinous – patriotism of Brooke’s poem which lauds the nobility of death and the glory of sacrifice. ‘Unexamined Lives’ has not flinched from confronting the grim reality of a war anomalously referred to as ‘Great’, and in so doing we have used contemporary records, diaries and newspapers from that era – yet the Brooke sentiments also have their place in the years between 1914-1918. At the outset, with Kitchener’s words of ‘Your Country Needs You’ ringing in their ears, young men raced to enlist, lied about their age and marched to war basking in the admiration of their loved ones. This was a not- to -be- missed chance to serve their country and the war would be over in a short time anyway. Better to live the rest of their lives as heroes, rather than skulking in corners as white- feathered cowards who had shamed their families by refusing the national call.

Amanda Solloway is a longstanding resident of Borrowash and can often be seen out and about in the village alongside her husband Rob and their dogs. She is a Parish Councillor, but in May 2015, the Solloway family experienced something of a collective tsunami when Amanda narrowly defeated sitting Labour MP, Chris Williamson, to become the Conservative MP for Derby North. The Labour MP had been widely expected to win; it was the shock result of the night in Derbyshire and nobody was more surprised than the new MP who was anything and everything but the stereotype of a female Tory politician. She had no Politics Philosophy and Economics degree from Oxford (or even a Geography degree from that university like her present boss,Theresa May) had never worked as a Special Advisor to a Cabinet Minister, at the Bank of England or even as a diary assistant or lowly caseworker to a Backbench MP.